Good Souls and Lost Souls: A Look Back at the Search for the Old New-Radiohead

On first glance, this list of words could be a vocabulary exercise for elementary schoolers, but hopefully you've recognized that they're all band names—specifically, what many in the UK considered to be the most exciting bands of the early 2000s. And considering the careers many of them have maintained over the past decade and a half, it's also a way of reminding you that Kid A ended up selling a hell of a lot more records for bands that weren’t Radiohead.

Though critically lauded as the greatest album of the new century, the absence of guitars onKid A was seen by many as Radiohead reneging on their promise to be the greatest rock band of their generation. Which created a void that the aforementioned bands filled with gusto, earning the then omni-present “new Radiohead” tag. Which is to say, they kinda sounded like old Radiohead.

This genre was arguably launched by Travis’ The Man Who (which celebrates its 15th anniversary in a few months) and crystallized in a review by Pitchfork contributor Douglas Wolk in Spin’s March 2002 issue that grouped new records from South, Clinic and Elbow. If you spent any time at Borders leafing through NME and Melody Maker and Q (and I’m guessing you might’ve if you’ve gotten this far), you know what these bands were about: The lyrics sounded like The Bends but the guitars sounded like OK Computer. The hope was that these bands would apply Radiohead’s futuristic sound to songs that reached the cheap seats, and it worked: We got a glut of early 2000s records that honestly hold up much better than Hail to the Thief and two of the new decade’s biggest, most ambitious and adventurous arena rock bands, Coldplay and Muse. Laugh if you must, but Coldplay’s got a better post-2002 track record than Radiohead and The 2nd Lawis nowhere as ludicrous as Thom Yorke’s ponytail.

Problem is that once Coldplay emerged from the pack, "new Radiohead" soon morphed into "new Coldplay"... and this is the last time we’ll discuss Keane and Athlete. And then Doves and Elbow, the two bands who looked like they’d have the most legs, respectively called it quits and turned into a J.V. Swell Season. But hell, you know you’re going to check out that Jimi Goodwin solo record that comes out in a month. And that new Elbow. Maybe you secretly think that Turin Brakes and Travis made their best records in years during 2013 (they did). Or maybe you’re just trying to figure out what American Anglophiles did to pass the time before the Libertines and Arctic Monkeys came around. In the meantime, the search for a worthy heir to The Bends and OK Computer still continues, but let’s take a moment to pay homage to the good souls who tried to fill that void.

“Planet Telex”

In honor of the Radiohead song with the craziest guitar effects, we have Doves, the biggest studio nerds of the bunch. Evolving from Madchester act Sub Sub after a catastrophic studio fire, Lost Souls and The Last Broadcast were everything we wanted out of New Radiohead: big anthems, lots of technological trickery without, y’know, the lyrical concerns about shadow governments crushing our hopes and dreams. They even scored a legit hit stateside with “Black & White Town” from the otherwise wan Some Cities, but they were held back by an utter lack of charisma that was even more pronounced when, somehow, the Strokes and Rapture opened up for them early on.

“The Bends” / “Bones”

JJ72: “Algeria”

You’ll find the occasional argument that The Bends is overrated and that it’s actually a 4-star alt-rock album grandfathered into “classic” status on account of it being the bridge from Pablo Honey to OK Computer. These are the songs that people will point towards because they are 4-star alt-rock songs, and thus outliers in what’s assumed to be the catalog of this generation’s greatest band. And so here’s where we’ll honor the outliers, the guys who made 4-star alt-rock songs and somehow got enough contact buzz to hook Anglophiles: Let’s hope this isn’t the last time we mention JJ72, Seafood and Kent in 2014.

“High and Dry”

Travis made two very good albums based on this kind of sadly sweet, choirboy acoustic ballad. They had the added bonus of having Nigel Godrich actually produce The Man Who and The Invisible Band as well as Fran Healy, a lyricist who knew that “don’t leave me high/ don’t leave me dry” might be a little too obtuse for some. Unfortunately, Healy decided to hire Anton Corbijn to shoot their press photos, start wearing a beret and write songs with titles like “Peace the Fuck Out”. Since he did that all at once, 12 Memories was the last America really heard from them.

“Fake Plastic Trees”

Ours: “Sometimes”

Before “Hallelujah” was integrated in every third TV dramedy, The Bends was Jeff Buckley’s biggest post-mortem boost; Thom Yorke name-checked him as a major influence on “Paranoid Android”. And so we honor Radiohead’s most diva-esque performance with the most pompous and Buckleyesque band of the lot, Ours. As Americans, they probably shouldn’t be included here, but Jimmy Gnecco went beyond aping Jeff Buckley and was actually his roadie at one point. Plus, Rolling Stone compared Distorted Lullabies to Kid A, and they should never live that down.

“(Nice Dream)”

Turin Brakes: “Underdog (Save Me)”

Along with I Am Kloot (ask your dad), Turin Brakes were the off-ramp from New Radiohead to “quiet is the new loud,” and their charming, low-key debut The Optimist took after the cosmic-folk of “(Nice Dream)”. Soon thereafter, they hired Tony Hoffer (the poor man’s Nigel Godrich) to produce their followup Ether Song, whose catchiest single contained the lyric “My love giving me head/ Feeling very guilty breaking the bread.” Which is the kind of lyric you can recall immediately despite not having heard “Painkiller (Summer Rain)” for nearly 12 years.

“Just”

How soon we forget that Muse was such a convincing Radiohead clone in their earliest incarnation, to the point where a mislabeled mp3 literally got them mixed up. Of course, it’s fun knowing in retrospect that Muse was a Radiohead clone in their least ambitious days and Showbiz is a fairly entertaining piece of The Bends worship, particularly “Muscle Museum” whose riff sorta sounded like someone trying to write a Swizz Beatz song on guitar.

“My Iron Lung”

The most schizophrenic Radiohead song is best exemplified by South, an extremely un-weird band with a weird career arc. They’re the first and probably only band that could be described as “post-UNKLE,” as From Here on In was released on James LaVelle’s Mo’Wax label, had one of the worst covers of the entire decade and alternated "O.C."-approved “Paint the Silence” with what felt like 40 minutes of breakbeats. Its follow-up With the Tides remains a nice, streamlined record of anthemic but not hooky Brit-rock and they eventually made a song very similar to “My Iron Lung” on 2008’s You Are Here, which I’m only aware of because our archives said I reviewed it.

“Bulletproof...I Wish I Was”

Cast of Thousands is actually a better record overall, but Elbow’s debut Asleep in the Back was more in the spirit of its time. Atmospheric, morose and moving at a crawl, it was a lush, lovelorn album that was my introduction to Talk Talk (the last half of the LP version of “Newborn” was usually compared to Spirit of Eden) and sounded great whenever I returned to my apartment extremely drunk during my last semester of college, meaning that I listened to it pretty much every single day for a solid four months.

“Black Star”

Coldplay’s Parachutes is actually a post-OK Computer record and a threadbare one at that: “Spies,” “We Never Change” and “Sparks” can’t decide whether they want to be “The Tourist” or “Exit Music (For A Romantic Comedy),” but “High Speed” wants to be “Subterranean Homesick Alien” in the worst way. Coldplay ended up breaking America quicker than any of their peers because “Yellow” was cut from the mold of The Bends’ climactic song, which gave the brief suggestion that Radiohead could’ve been a lager-swinging, girls-on-shoulders festival headliner in 1997. As opposed to 2012.

“Sulk”

I’ll still bump “Good Souls” when the mood strikes me, but if it were to end up on Starsailor’s Love is Here, “Sulk” would’ve been maybe the sixth-most unintentionally hilarious song about James Walsh’s superhuman capacity for self-pity.

“Street Spirit (Fade Out)”

Ade Blackburn sorta sounded like Thom Yorke and some of the guitars on Internal Wrangler sorta sounded like those on “Electioneering”. Otherwise, Clinic had no business being in these discussions, but they were anyway, if only because by channeling Radiohead’s spirit rather than their sound, they were seen as a legitimate candidate to take British rock music into bolder, new territory, much like “Street Spirit” signaled the end of Radiohead’s radio-friendly days. Instead, starting with Walking With Thee, they just sounded like Clinic for the next decade.